LEGO League

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Brightly colored LEGO vehicles zigged and zagged on little rubber wheels as extendable arms and hooks worked to maneuver tiles and overturn tiny ovens on tabletops.

Success elicited high-pitched screams and hoorahs from dozens of children egging them on.

Such was the scene Saturday afternoon at Preston Middle School, where hundreds of children ages 9 to 14 took part in a First LEGO League robotics tournament. For weeks leading up to this day, dozens of teams from schools across Poudre School District and Colorado researched and employed plenty of trial and error to program an autonomous robot to score points on the playing field.

This challenge, deemed Senior Solutions, required teams to come up with an innovative solution to a problem facing today’s senior citizens.

That’s where the Snow Bot 3000 comes in.

After talks with grandparents and neighbors, six fourth-graders from Traut Core Knowledge Elementary decided to craft a robot to shovel snow off driveways — a challenge for most people, not just seniors. Born from the idea were two prototypes: one made from cardboard and wheels, and the other from LEGOs.

Brian Chung, Esha Kapoor, Eric “Buddy” Kearns, Carson Pippin, Sigourney Scott and Alex Tocco gathered around the Snow Bot 3000 in Preston’s cafeteria, talking fast and furiously about the remote-controlled device that shoveled marshmallow “snow.” The LEGO version, which took the youngsters about six weeks to complete, took directions Saturday during the competition from a computer program.

This was Kapoor’s favorite part of what has been a 10-week practice in teamwork.

Parent team leaders Alan Pippin and Anne Scott are both engineers employed at Hewlett-Packard. To them, participation on the robotics team represents an opportunity to blend “creativity, engineering and problem solving,” Pippin said.

LEGO tournaments were held at Poudre High School last week and at Preston Middle and Liberty Common schools Saturday. Winning teams will advance on to the state competition in February. Scores will be posted on the Colorado First LEGO League website, Hunter-Laszlo said.